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For All Time (Part 2)
For All Nails #170: For All Time (Part 2) by Noel Maurer ---- :From the New York Herald Monthly Review of Books :May 1974 ... state-sponsored cannibalism. It is, in short, a dark vision intended to make us realize how lucky we are. This dark vision does, in fact, stem directly from the author's view of the ideology behind the men who organized the North American Rebellion. If there is a theme to Sobel's horrorific dystopia, it could be summed up as "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." The rebels in North America were the most idealistic and utopian of men. Formed by the Enlightenment, they believed in the perfectability of the human condition. With the right institutions, designed by rational men according to scientific precepts, utopia could be obtained. In the words of Frank Dana, they "believed in free will, held that man could be the master of his fate, rule himself, and wash away the abuses of centuries in a generation." In the real world, this utopianism soon came into contact with Mexico's reality: a impoverished land, riven by race and religion. The difficulties of governing a country that was more a geographic expression than a nation led the former rebels to abandon much of their utopianism. What emerged instead was a rough and ready pragmatism. In Sobel's fictional history, however, the utopians are triumphant in North America, and unrestrained by the reality of Hispanic Mexico. The horrors of Sobel's imaginary "Communism" are the direct result of this triumph. He does not, obviously, attempt to argue that Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson advocated the violent extermination of entire ethnic groups or social classes. He does, however, argue that the radical utopianism of his "totalitarians" and the idealism of the North American Rebellion have the same philosophical roots in the Enlightenment. In a world where the Rebellion succeeded, yet still failed to bring the millenium, the rational humanists are pushed in an ever-more radical direction in their pursuit of perfection. "Washing away the abuses of centuries" requires an ever harder scrubbing. Everything becomes justifiable, for how can utopia be denied? For every reaction, of course, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The reaction culminates in the nightmare racialism of Sobel's imaginary "Nazis." In short, Sobel links the rise of horrifying inhuman ideologies in the Old World with the triumph of their warm and humanistic, but ultimately failed, predecessor in the New. Many critics have taken For All Time as an indictment of the Mexican national character. This reviewer disagrees. Rather, For All Time implicitly argues that the real United States of Mexico, unlike the fictional United States of America, has been able to put aside ideology and solve its problems pragmatically. In fact, the last two chapters of Sobel's book read like a apologia for the Mercator dictatorship. When consumed by racial strife and torn apart by corrupt politicians in the 1940s, the real Mexico puts ideology aside and does what is needed to return to peace and stability. When similar strife hits the imaginary USA, the nation refuses to compromise its principles, and the violence escalates with no end in sight. Sobel's book, for all its faults and its highly unorthodox premise, is a worthy attempt to explore the philosophical roots of political ideologies. It is also, in this author's opinion, a back-handed complement towards Mexico; a country which has taken a far more difficult starting position than Sobel's fictional United States and done far more with it. Perhaps fiction can provide a mirror through which more North Americans can appreciate their western neighbor. ---- (Proceed to #171: Rocky Mountain Low.) (Proceed to 10 May 1974: The Briar Patch.) (Return to For All Nails.) Category:Robert Sobel